Widescreen: 'Terminator 2' was more than an action masterpiece - it was also a family story
Despite The Associated Press review, social media buzz on this weekend's release of "Terminator: Dark Fate" calls it the best installment in the franchise since 1991's action masterpiece, "Terminator 2: Judgment Day." That's admittedly not a hard feat in the wake of "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines," which tried too hard to make us laugh; the terminally boring "Terminator: Salvation," which at least yielded Christian Bale's infamous on-set rant; and "Terminator: Genisys," which suffered from bad casting and a worse script.
"Dark Fate" is also the first "Terminator" flick my dad isn't here to see. He took me to see "T2" on opening night, July 3, 1991, at the old Woodfield 3&4 in Schaumburg. (The DXL and Eileen Fisher stores on the mall's perimeter are there now.) I'm not sure if 12-year-old Sean had seen the first "Terminator," but I had watched writer/director James Cameron's "Aliens" about a hundred times with my dad, on a VHS tape dubbed off HBO.
My dad knew before I did that "T2" would be my first R-rated movie at the theater. I remember getting excited after hearing a radio spot for it - probably during a Kevin Matthews commercial break on AM-1000 - and my mom saying, "Don't worry, Dad's gonna take you."
My dad took me to a lot of movies. After I started making my own money, one of my great pleasures in life was taking him to the movies, even terrible ones such as "Terminator: Genisys." Improbably, Arnold Schwarzenegger was as important to us as, say, baseball is to so many other father-son relationships.
The summer after my freshman year of college, I read a column in the pages of this very newspaper that let me know I wasn't the only one.
Bill Granger wrote on June 24, 1998, in response to the American Film Institute's "100 Years, 100 Movies" list, and said "Terminator 2" deserved a spot over "real junk" like "Midnight Cowboy" or "Bonnie & Clyde."
"T2" is indeed a family story, one in which Arnold's time-traveling killing machine slowly learns how to be a surrogate father to a teenage John Connor (Edward Furlong), and mom Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) resists her lust for revenge on the robot's eventual creator (Joe Morton) when she sees he's part of his own loving family.
If "Dark Fate" can capture some of that magic - and deliver explosions and truck crashes and sci-fi fun, of course - all the years of waiting for Hamilton to return will have been worth it. I wish I could take my dad to see it.
The best way to watch 'T2'
... is James Cameron's "Special Edition," which restores about 15 minutes of scenes deleted from the original release. The best: Sarah and John perform cranial surgery on the T-800 in front of a mirror, a sequence accomplished with body doubles and an Arnold dummy.
You can see the Special Edition on most recent physical releases of "T2," like the 4K/Blu-ray/Digital HD package available at video retailers. Watching it online is a little trickier; it's not streaming anywhere, but you can buy it for $12.99 from iTunes and Amazon Video. You can rent it for $3.99 from Vudu.